De-Clayfaced
by Traitor of All Traitors
Summary: Alternate outcome to Growing Pains. What if Annie was saved from Clayface's attempt to reabsorb her? And what if something happened to result in Clayface losing his powers?


Creation began on 07-12-11

Creation ended on 12-01-19

Batman: The Animated Series

De-Clayfaced

A/N: I looked on the Internet and read whatever limited scraps I could about the episode _Growing Pains_, and recalled how bad it was for Robin to lose someone like that that was good at heart. This is my attempt to rectify the hurt that I'm sure others felt when the girl was taken by one of the most bizarre villains of Gotham City. Here goes.

When Annie jumped at Clayface/Matt Hagen to protect Robin, Clayface did what he had intended on doing since she got away from him: He absorbed her back into his body! But something happened that was not what Clayface had intended: His body convulsed violently, leaving him staggering onto the ground.

"Aaaaurgh!" He groaned, shifting his facial features. "What's…what's happening…to me?!"

Robin saw this and wondered what was happening himself.

Clayface's body shifted and compressed to a smaller, more human shape, but on his left side was the shape of a little girl.

"Annie!" Robin gasped, rushing over to help the girl that appeared to be fighting back against her creator. "I'm coming!"

Annie, having thought her existence would end the moment Clayface took her back into himself, found to her surprise that she was still here, trying to maintain her individuality and independent state.

Clayface, becoming more defined in human appearance, couldn't believe this was happening. It must've been something about the chemicals he had absorbed into his shape-shifting chemistry when he fell into the water during his last encounter with Batman, or maybe it was something to do with his animated doll thinking and acting on her own and meeting Robin. Whatever the reason, it was having an adverse side-effect on himself; he felt like he was losing all of his powers, every person he had ever imitated becoming lost to him.

Robin got near them and grabbed hold of Annie's hands, pulling her free of Clayface's solidifying grip.

"Aaaaurgh!" Clayface howled in pain. "No, stop!"

But Robin didn't stop. He couldn't stop; he was compelled to persist, compelled to save Annie, regardless of whether or not she was a part of Clayface but with her own mind. He was being a hero, and it was always the duty of a hero to save a life, no matter who they were.

CRACK! He freed Annie from Clayface, who returned to his original human form before his own misfortune that resulted in him becoming Clayface.

Annie was left in the same shape she was before he attempted to take her back into his body.

"No," yelled the man that had once been Clayface as he examined his new state, which seemed deprived of any abilities beside the standard human ones. "No!"

But Robin had no time to allow the criminal the displeasure at being defeated and performed a jump kick on his chest, knocking him to the ground.

"You've lost," he told him.

-x-

By the time Batman arrived, he couldn't believe that something like this had happened: Clayface, in his original human form, Matt Hagen, cuffed and laying on the floor and Robin sitting next to the girl that had been a creation of Clayface's. The cops arrived and apprehended the criminal, escorting him to Arkham Asylum, with his list of charges including attempted murder (this was due to Annie trying to save Robin's life), while Annie was being escorted to Gotham General for a basic medical examination.

Clayface, or rather, Matt Hagen, couldn't believe this had happened to him! He tried to shift his hands into blades, but nothing happened. He couldn't even shift his face, which had reverted back to its scarred physique. He didn't want to believe it, but there was no other explanation: His powers were either disabled…or were removed when he was separated from the girl he made to be his eyes and ears on the surface.

"It looks like Clayface has been De-Clayfaced," said one of the officers watching him, making a joke.

-x-

"It's…almost unreal," said Dr. Leslie Thompkins to Batman and Robin, having looked over the blood sample belonging to Annie. "The girl, Annie, is probably no different from any of us. I mean, despite her origins and her relation to Clayface…Matt Hagen, she seems to be the same as we are."

"You mean…she's normal?" Robin asked her.

"While I may have to look at the blood sample several more times to confirm it for sure, but…yes. Yes, I'd say she's normal."

The Boy Wonder was left wondering what was going to happen to Annie now if this was true: She was about Robin's age, despite being only several hours to even a day or two old, had rudimentary knowledge of things, and possessed nothing short of the clothes on her back.

"She has been asking to see you, though," Dr. Thompkins told Robin, pointing to the door of the room opposite of the hallway in which Annie was waiting in.

Robin then set out to go meet her, wondering still what to do about her future.

-x-

Try as he might, Matt Hagen couldn't make his hands, feet or any other part of his body shift anything from size, density or features. He'd been in his cell in Arkham for almost a month, and he'd been subjected to several hours of random tests by the doctors there responsible for treating him. Hair samples, skin samples, blood samples, even bone marrow samples had been taken from his body, all in an attempt to understand what had happened to turn him back into his pre-mutated state.

"Still nothing so far in any test we've run," he heard one of the men responsible for treating him during his incarceration here.

"So far, there has been one theory that may be true," another of the men responded. "One of his skin samples showed signs of having adverse reactions to a cleaning chemical we use to sterilize our scalpels and other equipment here. We're trying to check with various companies that use sterilizing solutions in order to find the exact chemical that causes the adverse reactions, but if the theory pans out, we may have found something that can serve as Clayface's Achilles' heel."

_They found something?_ Matt wondered. _A cleaning solution did this to me? How can a cleaning solution cause me to lose my powers?_

-x-

Bruce had a hard time trying to come to grips about the repeated analysis of Annie's DNA chemistry, uncertain of how, with the exception of a dominant X-chromosome in her makeup, Annie was as human as any of the normal people of Gotham City were. There were no signs of degeneration or mutation that led to how Matt Hagen became Clayface, but he'd rather be cautious than regret the possibly that this girl might turn into a metahuman nightmare until the girl had a thorough examination from an expert. But for now, he would let the girl live as she did in the manor where Tim kept a watchful eye on her. Whatever happened to affect Clayface…may have been what caused him to lose his powers or had them disabled.

To be continued…

A/N: Again, it's taken me a long time to finish something like this from long ago.


End file.
